If Corbyn is to survive he needs to FIGHT BACK – and get a BACKBONE
There was NO REASON to apologise for chairing a meeting at which Auschwitz survivor, Hajo Meyer Compared Israel to Nazi Germany
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| Corbyn's speech 8 years ago condemning the siege and Israel's attack on Gaza is now being used to attack him - Corbyn's past is being used to attack the present - that is why he must defend his past not apologise or run away from it |
For the first time in over two years I fear for Jeremy Corbyn's leadership of the Labour Party. As Theresa May's hold over the Tory Party and her problems with Brexit mount, the desperation of our ruling class to place the Labour Party in 'safe' hands grows. That is the clue to the Zionist attacks on Labour over non-existent 'antisemitism'.
What possible reason could there be for the entirely artificial story that surfaced this week about a meeting Corbyn chaired eight years ago? It is clear that there is a systematic campaign, fronted by Zionist and pro-Israel organisations, supported by our yellow press and the BBC, to oust Corbyn.
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| Walter Wolfgang, former NEC member and refugee from Nazi Germany, gives his full support to Pete Willsman unlike the Scab Leader of Momentum, Jon Lansman |
What possible reason could there be for the entirely artificial story that surfaced this week about a meeting Corbyn chaired eight years ago? It is clear that there is a systematic campaign, fronted by Zionist and pro-Israel organisations, supported by our yellow press and the BBC, to oust Corbyn.
For over two years I have traversed the country speaking at public meetings. One point above all I have stressed is that it is not me, Jackie Walker or Ken Livingstone who were the main targets of the anti-Semitism witchhunt. We were collateral damage. The real target was and is Jeremy Corbyn.
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| Lansman plays the role of a 5th columnist, a scab |
These past few weeks have borne this out. It is Corbyn himselfwho is in their line of fire. Margaret Hodge’s calling Corbyn a ‘fucking anti-Semite and a racist’ was not a sudden rush to the head. It was premeditated and coordinated . It gave the cue to the Jewish Chronicle to launch an all out attack last week on Corbyn, in consort with two other Zionist papers.
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Jon Lansman continues to play a treacherous role. Momentum's lack of any democratic structures means it is incapable of stopping him. Momentum’s National Co-ordinating Group is unable to restrain him. Having removed Pete Willsman from the JC9 slate, without any consultation, Lansman now defends Margaret Hodge.
Lansman would prefer to have Labour First's arch-Zionist Luke Akehurst elected to the NEC instead. Akehurst, Director of We Believe in Israel, supported Israel's murder of 130 unarmed demonstrators in Gaza recently. Lansman's scabbing behaviour is shameful. The time is soon coming when Lansman, and Owen Jones will call for Corbyn to resign. Momentum is rapidly losing its raison d'être.
This week marked a new low in the Zionist campaign to remove Corbyn. Israel’s black propagandists alighted on a public meeting held at Parliament’s Portcullis House 8 years ago by the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network. Before the local elections the excuse was a long erased mural. This week the Jewish Chronicle, no doubt fearing that Corbyn may not be around this week, sought out dirt about John McDonnell. Revealed: John McDonnell signed Early Day Motion welcoming launch of extreme anti-Zionist group in the form of an Early Day Motion he had signed welcoming the formation of the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network. The only problem with this ‘revelation’ is that 26 other MPs signed it, including one Tory! Naturally The Guardian reprinted this story about McDonnell's EDM welcoming the formation of IJAN. It also published a speech by Corbyn 8 years ago comparing Israel's siege and attack on Gaza to Leningrad.
The principal speaker at the meeting 8 years ago was the late Hajo Meyer, a Dutch Jew who survived Auschwitz. For Hajo Never Again meant never again for anyone, not just Jews. Corbyn’s suggestion that he was chairing a meeting where the speakers were people he strongly disagreed with is about as believable as Trump’s ‘misstatement’ at the press conference with Putin. It lacks all credibility.
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| The Jewish Chronicle launches the latest attempt to launch a coup against Corbyn |
This meeting has been public knowledge for years but now anything and everything is being dredged up in order to attack Corbyn. You don’t have to be a member of MENSA to work out that those who are behind this latest ‘revelation’ are not interested in anti-Semitism. Their only concern is removing Corbyn.
Until Corbyn develops a backbone and starts standing up for what he believed then he will continue to be rocked by these accusations. There is plenty more of this stuff for the media to dig up. It is now crystal clear that this 'antisemitism' nonsense is about Israel and Zionism.
Until Corbyn develops a backbone and starts standing up for what he believed then he will continue to be rocked by these accusations. There is plenty more of this stuff for the media to dig up. It is now crystal clear that this 'antisemitism' nonsense is about Israel and Zionism.
I don’t know whether Seamus Milne, who is Corbyn’s adviser has taken leave of his senses but the best indeed the only way of dealing with this was to stand firm, not apologise and say that Hajo Meyer had every right to make a comparison. Note a comparison is not the same thing as saying Israel and Nazi Germany are identical.
Comparisons with Nazi Germany are two a penny. They are not in the least anti-Semitic. Seymour Hersh, who broke the story of My Lai, the village in Vietnam where the Americans murdered over 200 villagers, rememberedthat one of the soldiers who took part began his story by saying “It was a Nazi-type thing.” Comparisons with the Nazis are normal when evaluating particularly horrendous deeds. Nazi Germany didn't spring from nowhere. It was a consequence of West European capitalism, including its colonial empires and the racial sciences that developed, including eugenicism.
Benny Morris, an Israeli historian, in Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited describes how, in November 1948, Eliezer Peri of the leftist Mapam, received a letter describing a massacre at al-Dawayima. There were ‘hundreds’ of dead. Agriculture Minister, Aharon Cisling referred to a letter he had received about the atrocities declared: ‘I couldn’t sleep all night ... This is something that determines the character of the nation ... Jews too have committed Nazi acts.’ ‘The children they killed by breaking their heads with sticks. There was not a house without dead’, wrote Eliezer Kaplan, the Jewish Agency Treasurer and later Minister of Finance. Perhaps this too was anti-Semitic?
As I showed in a recent articlethere are hundreds of comparisons that Israelis themselves make between their actions and those of the Nazis. There is nothing in the slightest anti-Semitic about this. It merely reflects the fact that Israel, because it claims its lineage from the Holocaust and what the Nazis did, has a special duty not to emulate them. It is a means by which this racist settler state can be held to at least some human norms.
What is so depressing is that Corbyn isn’t able to figure this out for himself. Whether it is just stupidity or political cowardice I leave it to others to discern. Today Corbyn has an article in The Guardian I will root antisemites out of Labour – they do not speak for me. It repeats all Corbyn’s previous errors and more, not least in accepting that there is an anti-Semitic problem in the Labour Party. A political friend, Brian Robinson was impressed by the article. I wasn’t. I reproduce the exchange below:
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| Corbyn's article in The Guardian |
Dear Brian
thank you for sending me a copy of your response to Jeremy Corbyn's article in the Guardian.
I do not agree that it is a 'very powerful and well thought out statement.' Quite the contrary it is pathetically weak and will do nothing to stem the present attacks which I assume is its purpose.
It rests on a fallacy, namely that there is widespread anti-semitism in the Labour Party. There isn't. One idiot who believes that Hitler was much misunderstood does not mean that the party is antisemitic. Every party is entitled to its quota of idiots. The Parliamentary Labour Party is full of them. The 'antisemitism' campaign was got up even before JC became leader. It will only end when Jeremy resigns and the Right resume what they see as their rightful place at the helm. Those who believe otherwise are fooling themselves.
I should though add that the campaign against JC, although it is waged in the interests of Israel and our alliance with the United States, is being waged in the name of 'the Jewish community.' If Jeremy is toppled as leader then many people are going to blame Jews for what has happened. The campaign of the Zionists to remove Jeremy as leader, because that is what it is, can only stir up anti-Semitism, which I suspect is the intention of many of them.
Historically Zionism has never had any problem with genuine anti-Semites. Their great benefactor Lord Arthus Balfour was a prime example. As Prime Minister in 1905 he was responsible for introducing the Aliens Act preventing the immigration of Jewish refugees from Czarist Russia. He was personally antisemitic. However he was also an ardent Zionist. That is why today Israel is best friends with the antisemitic regimes in Hungary, Poland and the Vizigrad 4. It is also why the alt-Right in the United States can combine anti-Semitism with ardent support for Zionism. Its neo-Nazi founder Richard Spencer even describes himself as a White Zionist. Much like Tommy Robinson and his fans! After all, if you are a fascist or anti-semite what is there not to like about Israel?
Jeremy forgot to mention such minor matters as the recent visit by Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban to Israel. Orban even paid homage to the holocaust dead in Israel's Yad Vashem propaganda museum, in a sickening display of piety and hypocrisy. This despite trying to rehabilitate Admiral Horthy whom he described as an 'outstanding statesman'. Horthy was the pro-Nazi leader of Hungary who dispatched 1/2 million Jews to Auschwitz. But at least Netanyahu and Orban can agree that they both hate that archetypal Jewish financier, George Soros. Why Netanyahu's son, Yair, even drew a cartoon of Soros - widely praised by the Daily Stormerand David Duke, former Grand Wizard of the KKK.
The attack of the 3 Zionist papers on Jeremy as an 'existentialist threat' to the Jewish community was part of a wider campaign to remove him from the leadership. The far-Right editor of the Jewish Chronicle, Stephen Pollard called Jeremy an anti-semite as did the departing President of the Board of Deputies, Jonathan Arkush. If Jeremy wasn't so busy trying to appease his accusers he might work out why he too is now being accused of being antisemitic.
For a long time the Board of Deputies and the various Zionist groups pretended that the campaign against 'antisemitism' in the Labour Party had nothing to do with Israel and Zionism. Yet what other purpose is there in their desire to adopt unadulterated the IHRA 'definition' of antisemitismother than to conflate anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism? That is why 7 of the 11 examples relate to Israel. The Oxford English dictionary definitionof antisemitism, 'Hostility to or prejudice against Jews' consists of 6 words. What possible reason is there to adopt a 500+ word 'definition'? As the distinguished former Court of Appeal Judge, Sir Stephen Sedley, who is himself Jewish, observed the IHRA 'fails the first test of any definition: it is indefinite.
Why did Jeremy Corbyn follow Theresa May in adopting this definition which Professor David Feldman, who was part of the Chakrbarti Inquiry and Director of the Sears Institute for the Study of Antisemitism has described as 'bewilderingly imprecise?' Does JC really believe Theresa May is interested in a 'definition' of antisemitism that Viktor Orban and the Polish regime can sign up to? It is this kind of idiocy by Corbyn that is responsible for his current problems.
A number of us have been expelled or suspended because of the false anti-semitism campaign. It is no coincidence that it is Jewish and Black anti-racists who were the main target of this campaign. As I have repeatedly said in the past 2 years, this campaign was not about me or Jackie Walker or Ken Livingstone. The real target was Jeremy. Yet despite this he decided to keep silent as the Compliance Unit went about their witchhunting work.
Of course if some people hold to the idea that being an anti-Zionist is a form of anti-semitism it all makes sense, which is why Corbyn's appalling apology for a meeting 8 years ago, when a holocaust survivor, Hajo Meyer, drew comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany, was so absurd. How long is Jeremy going to go around apologising for his past instead of having the backbone to stand up to his accusers and defend his actions? Of course Jeremy didn't dissociate himself from what Hajo said at the time. I was at the meeting. Hajo a survivor of Auschwitz was in a very good position to understand that just as the Nazi state first separated the the Jews and then murdered them, so Israel is also segregating and separating its Palestinian citizens. The fact that they are not also murdering them, or at least not on the scale of Nazi Germany, should not be a cause for celebration.
Corbyn is wrong to say that Zionism is not a form of racism. What else can a settler colonial movement and ideology be that sought to displace the indigenous population? 'A land without a people for a people without a land'is not an expression of comradely solidarity. Zionism in alliance with British colonialism established a militarised settler state in Palestine. It discriminated from the beginning in evicting the Palestinians first from the economy and then from the country altogether. What do you think the Jewish National Fund was? A benevolent society? Its whole existence was based around the idea that it would only redeem land for the benefit of Jews. If you want to know more then I refer you to the Government's Hope-Simpson Report in 1930 into the riots the previous year in Palestine.
My worry is that by continually appeasing his accusers Jeremy is discrediting himself. Instead of appeasing and apologising he should stand up to those whose real agenda is defence of the Apartheid State in Israel. Jeremy mentions the Jewish Nation State Law, Israel's equivalent of the Nuremburg Laws, but he draws no conclusions about the inherent nature of racism in Zionist Israel. In Germany the Jews were stripped of their German citizenship and thus nationality. In Israel there is only a Jewish nationality and the Jewish Nation State Law makes it clear that only Jews in Israel have national rights which means that the individual rights of Israeli Arabs are less than those of Israeli Jews. Because Israel is the nation state of Jews, all Jews, wherever they live, Arab citizens are thus the equivalent of resident aliens.
Unfortunately during all his time in the Palestine solidarity movement, Jeremy seems to have understood nothing about the cause of Palestinian dispossession and the permanent military regime that they face. That is what Zionism is about. Jeremy's bleating about a two state solution is pathetic. Two states is not going to happen and never was going to happen and today it is clear to all with eyes to see that it cannot happen. In the words of Tzipi Hotoveli, Israel's Deputy Foreign Minister 'this land is ours. All of it is ours.' What part of this does Corbyn not understand? Who or what does he think is going to be the agency for this two states? Does not Jeremy understand the significance of Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as the Israeli capital? Two states is a pretext to perpetuate the present military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, an occupation that is now 51 years old. That is why Labour Friends of Apartheid Israel supports 2 states.
No Brian the article is terrible.
Tony
Congratulations, Jeremy, on that very powerful and well-thought-out statement being your article in the Guardian. An extremely difficult and highly fraught moment, as you don't need me to tell you, but you've got the balance right.
I'm not a Labour party member but I vote Labour and hope to do so in the next election whenever it comes and like many other Jews I have been deeply upset, and quite frightened, by the wholly unmerited abuse and misrepresentation to which you, and the party, have been subjected. I'm sure some of my fellow-Jews are sincere in their expressions of anxieties even though I believe those anxieties to be unwarrented and no doubt based on all-too-true history; however I'm equally sure that the majority of those who are Zionists are opportunistically exploiting accusations of bogus antisemitism, and cynically at that, partly as apologists for Israel and partly in attempts to rescue the Tory party and prop up the present, and failing, socio-economic system.
The various bodies that claim to speak so loudly (dare I say noisily) on behalf of some supposed homogeneous entity, "the Jewish community" are not in fact so speaking. They do not for example represent me, nor my friends and comrades in such groups as Jews for Justice for Palestinians, Free Speech on Israel, the Jewish Socialist Group, Jewish Voice for Labour, Independent Jewish Voices, and others.
You have right on your side, so keep strong!
With good wishes and in solidarity
Brian Robinson
Dr Brian Robinson (Retired NHS psychiatrist)
PRESS STATEMENT from the INTERNATIONAL JEWISH ANTI-ZIONIST NETWORK UK (IJAN UK)
For more information contact:
Michael Kalmanovitz tel: 07722 926562 email: UK@IJAN.org
Michael Kalmanovitz tel: 07722 926562 email: UK@IJAN.org
IJAN is an international network of Jewish people opposed to imperialism, militarism, apartheid and genocide. We support the liberation of the Palestinian people, and the right of return for those driven from their homes and their land by Israeli occupation and ethnic cleansing. IJAN has active chapters in Argentina, Canada, France, Spain, the UK and the US.
In 2010, IJAN and the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign organised the Never Again – For Anyone speaking tour with 85 year-old Jewish Auschwitz survivor Dr Hajo Meyer, this included the meeting in the House of Commons on Holocaust Memorial Day, 27 January.
Dr Meyer spoke on “The Misuse of the Holocaust for Political Purposes”, and Dr Haidar Eid, who participated in the meeting from Gaza via speakerphone, on the situation in Palestine. They compared the dehumanisation of Jewish people in Hitler’s Germany pre-1941 and the dehumanisation of Palestinian people in current day Israel and occupied Palestine. Throughout the tour, Dr Meyer received standing ovations – many hearing for the first time important truths about Israel’s occupation of Palestine.
The meeting Never Again – For Anyone was a coming together of many communities which have faced dehumanisation, racism and genocide. Speakers were Armenian, Bangladeshi, Irish, Native American, Roma, Rwandan, Tamil, as well as people with disabilities, and a speaker on the Slave Trade from Africa to the Americas and the revolution which ended slavery in Haiti.
Dr Meyer said:
‘My great lesson from Auschwitz is: whoever wants to dehumanise any other, must first be dehumanised himself. The oppressors are no longer really human whatever uniform they wear.’
The event attracted leading Zionist figures Louise Ellman MP [then and now, Vice Chair of Labour Friends of Israel], Jerry Lewis [then Vice President, Board of Deputies] and Jonathan Hoffman [then Co-Vice Chair of the Zionist Federation], and Christian Friends of Israel.
Most of them had clearly not come to listen. They barracked both Dr Meyer and Dr Eid, and one of them, Martin Sugarman, had to be escorted out by the Commons security; on his way out he stunned everyone by giving the Nazi salute and shouting "Sieg Heil".
Following the deaths of more than 2,000 Palestinians in Gaza in July 2014, a letter from survivors of the Nazi genocide and hundreds of their descendants, called for “a full economic, cultural and academic boycott of Israel”. The letter reads:
“Genocide begins with the silence of the world . . . We must raise our collective voices and use our collective power to bring about an end to all forms of racism, including the ongoing genocide of Palestinian people.”
“Never again” must mean NEVER AGAIN FOR ANYONE!” Dr Hajo Meyer was the first to sign on. The letter was published in the New York Times on 24 August 2014, the morning after he died.
Following this year’s Israeli massacre of Palestinians during their Great March of Return, our members recently initiated and circulated a statement calling for an arms embargo, and an open letter to the Board of Deputies of British Jews, signed by over 100 Jewish people, many of them distinguished, including Prof Moshe Machover, Michael Rosen and Sir Stephen Sedley, condemning BoD’s support for the massacre and refuting its claim to speak for all Jewish people in Britain.
We welcome the letter from distinguished Palestinians defending their “inalienable rights” and refusing “attempts to silence public discussion” (Guardian 31 July), and the comment from Jewish former Appeal Judge, Rt. Hon. Sir Stephen Sedley (Guardian 27 July):
“. . . both Jews and non-Jews in the UK are entitled, without being stigmatised as antisemites, to contend that a state that by law denies Palestinians any right of self-determination is a racist state, or to ask whether there is some moral equivalence between shooting down defenceless Jews in eastern Europe and unarmed Palestinian demonstrators in Gaza.”
For a more detailed report of the Never Again tour, see Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign’s statement here.
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There is also an article in the latest issue of Labour Briefing NEC slate: vote for Peter Willsman which includes a statement from Walter Wolfgang, a former member of Labour's National Executive Committee, who people were remember was physically assaulted at a Labour Party conference for heckling Jack Straw. Walter came to Britain as a refugee from Nazi Germany and, unlike Jon Lansman or Luciana Berger (because there is very little difference between the two) is able to discern what is and is not anti-semitism.
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| Under Tony Blair the stewards act like fascist thugs as they removed "Walter Wolfgang, a refugee from Nazi Germany, for quietly heckling war criminal Jack Straw |
WHY I WILL BE VOTING FOR PETE WILLSMAN”
STATEMENT FROM WALTER WOLFGANG
I came to Britain as a refugee from Nazi Germany, with a strong and continuing commitment to Judaism, and still attend my synagogue regularly. I have been a member of the Labour Party for 70 years. As a former member of Labour’s National Executive Committee myself, I have served with Pete Willsman and know him to be a committed anti-racist and a strong supporter of Jeremy Corbyn. I am dismayed that Pete is under attack at the very time when the ballot for the NEC is taking place, and despite his deep and public apology. Pete Willsman is a staunch champion of party democracy. I will be voting for him, and urge Labour Party members to do likewise.